Senate votes to remove Judge Thomas Porteous from office

AP Photo/Harry HamburgFederal Judge Thomas Porteous heads to the Senate Chamber on Tuesday as senators heard final arguments in his impeachment trial proceeding.

WASHINGTON --The U.S. Senate this morning approved all four articles of impeachment against New Orleans federal Judge Thomas Porteous, removing him from his lifetime seat on the federal bench and denying him his $174,000 annual pension.

With the 96-0 vote on Article 1, Porteous became the eighth federal judge to be convicted by the Senate and removed from office through the impeachment process.

Aside from losing his job and his pension, there is no other penalty, fine or imprisonment that attaches to his conviction.

"Today brought closure to the long controversy over my actions as a federal district judge. I am deeply saddened to be removed from office but I felt it was important not just to me but to the judiciary to take this fight to the Senate," Porteous said after the vote. "I am deeply grateful to those senators who voted against the articles. While I still believe these allegations did not rise to the level of impeachable offenses as a constitutional matter, I understand how people of good-faith could disagree.

"I will now be returning to Louisiana and my family. My family has been a constant and vital source of support throughout this ordeal. I have previously apologized for the mistakes that I committed in this case. I never disputed many of the underlying facts and I previously accepted punishment in the Fifth Circuit. While I disagree with the decision of the Senate, I must now accept that judgment."

The first article brought by the House charged that in 1997, Porteous, serving as a federal judge, should have recused himself from hearing and deciding the Lifemark Hospitals case, failing to disclose that, as a state judge, he had a "corrupt financial relationship" with attorneys who were subsequently involved in the hospital case. His behavior, according to the article, was "incompatible with the trust" placed in him as a federal judge and met the Constitutional standard of committing the "high crime or "misdemeanor" necessary to merit his removal.

The Senate also voted to convict Porteous on Article 2, which accused him of corruptly accepting meals, trips and other gifts from a bail bondsman while serving as a state judge. On this article, the vote was 69-27 for conviction, clearing the two-thirds threshhold. Jonathan Turley, Porteous' counsel, had argued that the Senate should not convict Porteous for behavior that occurred before he served on the federal bench.

On the third article, alleging that Porteous lied during his personal bankruptcy case, the Senate voted 88-8 for conviction, The chair and vice chair of the Senate Impeachment Committee -- Sens. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah -- voted "no" on both the second and third articles of impeachment.

On the fourth article, alleging that Porteous misled the Senate by not disclosing during his 1994 confirmation process the corruption of which he now stands convicted, the Senate voted 90 to 6 to convict.

Sens. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and David Vitter, R-La., voted guilty on all four counts.

After the vote on the final article, there were several minutes of confusion and disarray as the Senate figured out whether, by virtue of its previous votes, Porteous was already disqualified from ever holding future federal office, or whether that required a separate vote.

That latter was the case, and senators, some of whom were headed for the exits, were called back for a final roll call on the Porteous impeachment, but it was not conducted in the same formal manner as the previous four votes, in which each senator responded from behind his or her desk. The Senate then voted 94 to 2 to "forever disqualify" Porteous from federal office. The "no" votes were cast by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and Joseph Lieberman, I-D, Conn.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the lead House impeachment manager, told senators Tuesday that Porteous had demanded payments and gifts from lawyers and bailbonds executives to help support "a lifestyle which he couldn't otherwise afford" that included frequent gambling at casinos. Schiff said Porteous so corrupted the system that in a complicated federal hospital case one of the parties felt a need to bring in a "crony" of the judge to its legal team because the other side already had hired a Porteous friend.

"Everyone around the judge has fallen," Schiff said. "The bailbondsmen have gone to jail, the other state judges he helped recruit have gone to jail, the lawyers who gave him the cash lost their law licenses and (have) given up their practices. The judge is a gambler and he is betting that he can beat the system just one more time."

Turley, the George Washington University law professor who served as Porteous' lead counsel, told senators that the judge made mistakes, mostly because of financial problems related to a gambling addiction. Some of it was unseemly, such as taking free lunches and other gifts, but none of his actions came close to the sinister plot of kickbacks painted by House impeachment managers, Turley said.